We cruised from Sevastopol to Yalta. Yalta, like all of Crimea, although internationally recognized as part of Ukraine, has been under Russian control since 2014. The two special things we saw were Lividia Palace and Alexander Nevsky Cathedral.
Kahn’s Palace (or Bakhchysarai Palace) was built in the 16th century and was home to a series of Crimean Khans. Bakhchysarai means Palace of Gardens and is an example of Tatar-Muslim architecture. We visited the palace by bus from Sevastopol.
Khan’s Palace is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is considered the gem of Moorish architecture comparable to the palaces of the Alhambra in Spain and the Topkapi in Turkey.
On our third day in Odesa we took a bus trip of almost two hours to Akkerman Fortress. Akkerman Fortress (also called Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi fortress) was built on the site of the ancient Greek city of Tyres. Construction of the fortress is believed to have begun in the 13th century. Akkerman Fortress was protected by the Black Sea (Dniester Estuary), a moat, and its walls (see birds eye view below). Like most of this region, the area has had many rulers, which you can read about in the Wikipedia article.
Odesa has a long and complicated history, like much of this area. In antiquity there was a Greek settlement at the site. There is known to have been a settlement which was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by 1415. The Grand Duchy included large portions of the former Kievan Rus’ and other neighbouring states, including what is now Belarus, Lithuania, most of Ukraine as well as parts of Latvia, Moldova, Poland and Russia. Odesa became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1529 until the Ottomans’ defeat in the Russo-Turkish War (1787–1792). In 1794 Catherine the Great, empress of Russia, established a navy harbor and trading port and soon after it was named Odesa. From 1819 to 1858, it was a free port. During the Soviet period it was a trading port and naval base. Ukraine became independent again when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. Odesa is the third largest city in Ukraine and (was) a major seaport and transportation hub.
It was when I started to post this photo of the statue of Catherine the Great that I discovered she is no longer there… That removal was part of the Derussification of Ukraine. The Revolution of Dignity, also known as the Maidan Revolution or the Ukrainian Revolution, took place in Ukraine in February 2014 at the end of the Euromaidan protests. It was In late November 2013, that Ukrainians took to the streets in peaceful protest after then-president Viktor Yanukovych chose not to sign an agreement that would have integrated the country more closely with the European Union. On February 22, 2014, after President Yanukovych had fled the country, parliament voted to oust him and hold new elections and on May 25, Ukrainians elected Petro Poroshenko as president. After the October elections, a new pro-reform coalition government came into power in December 2014. Polls conducted in Odesa from September to December 2014 found no support for joining Russia.
This is not the type of post I intended to make, documenting our 2013 cruise in Ukraine. Yesterday I tried to find out what was happening in Odesa and discovered that in July 2023 Transfiguration Cathedral was heavily damaged.
The following photograph is from the New York Times in their article about the attack.
